Should Twitter Beware an UberMedia Rival?

Tell folks to stop making Twitter clients (as Twitter just did) and what do they do? How about build a better Twitter.

CNN reports UberMedia may be planning to. Well, is planning to at least build a social network. And according to sources: One that’s ostensibly designed to go toe-to-toe (or tweet-to-tweet) with Twitter.

How do you out-Twitter Twitter? For starters, you offer stuff Twitter doesn’t. Like more than 140 characters per dispatch. We call what we’re doing with Twitter today “micro-blogging” for a reason (you know what they say brevity’s the soul of). Anything longer, and you’re hopping over to Facebook. Or WordPress. Or sticking “more…” links in your tweets that lead followers to separate websites–something Twitter could itself easily add by offering optional “more” pop-ups or drop-downs (why they haven’t already is anyone’s guess).

UberMedia already has more than its toes in the social media pool. You might know them for UberSocial (a Twitter client), TwidRoyd (Twitter for Android devices), Echofon (iPhone/iPad/computer synchronization), and UberCurrent (a Twitter client with visual perks). Altogether a study cited by CNN says those apps account for 11.5% of tweets sent on a single day last month. In fact the third-most popular way to send tweets is UberSocial, after Twitter itself (the website) and Twitter’s own iPhone app.

If CNN’s sources are accurate, UberMedia’s move should surprise no one given recent bad blood between it and Twitter. Twitter banned some of UberMedia’s apps earlier this year, claiming they violated Twitter’s usage policies, even at one point forcing UberMedia to change an app name. Twitter eventually restored access, but it’s not hard to imagine the conversations that probably transpired at UberMedia during the row and after its “resolution.”

Do we need another Twitter? No thanks. But I’d consider using a better Twitter. Wouldn’t you?